I was absolutely gutted today to hear the news that Terry Pratchett had died. I turned to Facebook to share grief with the world (as you do) and sat staring at my phone for half an hour. How do you distil your feelings about the death of the author you’ve read almost continuously for the past 25 years into a Facebook status? I’ve lived inside this man’s head for the majority of my life and it feels like losing a member of the family.
I started reading Discworld books as a young teen on the recommendation of my local librarian. He wasn’t an orangutan and he didn’t have a beard or pointy hat so he probably wasn’t a wizard. He was a great librarian though because he managed to track down every Terry Pratchett book in the county one by one and get them sent to our little library so I could devour them.
My collection of Terry Pratchett books is … comprehensive … and I read them all the time. My wife keeps telling me I should read something else and I do read other books from time to time but I go straight back to my Terry Pratchett books when I’m finished. Some of these books I’ve been reading for 25 years and I still find something new every time I read them. The continuity is amazing for 40 books written over 3 decades with characters that might have made only a cameo appearance in the first couple of books popping up 30 books later.
I was fortunate enough to accidentally (no, really) rent a holiday cottage in the next village to Terry’s house a couple of years ago. The housekeeper told me which pub he drank in and I thought about going a few times but I decided against it, figuring that his local is probably the last public place on earth he can go without being bothered by fans. My kids wanted to walk up the lane to his house and tell him how much of a fan I was but I pointed out that that’s stalking. He probably wouldn’t have minded but I felt like he’d earned what little privacy he had. I’m one of what I imagine to be a fairly small number of people who not only know where the Chalk is but to have seen the corner of Discworld that Tiffany Aching inhabits. The reason the Chalk feels so real in the stories is because it absolutely is – it’s what he saw when he looked out of his window.
Pterry’s genius has earned him immortality but a world with no new Terry Pratchett books is just too much to contemplate at the moment. Terry Pratchett and the Discworld have been a big part of my life for so long. No more books to look forward to. No more harassing the staff at Waterstones for pre-order dates when I know a book is due out soon. We’ll never know whether it’s Carrot or Nobby, what happens when a werewolf and a human make a baby, what really happened to Esk or where little Sam’s cow is. This makes me sad even though I know we would never have found out anyway because he didn’t know himself. He could have tied up all these loose ends with a few words but I think he liked to keep himself in suspense as much as his readers.
Terry had been suffering from a rare form of Alzheimer’s for the last few years which he referred to as his “embuggerance”. He died at home, surrounded by his family in a bed covered in cats. He went before the disease took his mind which is a small consolation. His death was announced on the Twitter account he shared with his assistant, Rob.
At last, Sir Terry, we must walk together.
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
The End.
I know how you feel, I’ve been feeling sick ever since I heard the news.
I’ve read all the books numerous times (except Raising Steam which is only on it’s second reading). It’s become a ritual just before Christmas to read Hogfather and the Winter Smith.
Many years ago, quite by accident, I met the great man when he walked into me near the centre point building near Oxford street.
He was very apologetic and signed the front page of the A4 refill pad I had just bought – unfortunately it was one of the rare days that I wasn’t carrying one of his books. I’ve still got the page framed on my wall. It just says “Boo! Terry Pratchett”
No more new Discworld books!
No more haunting the library to get my hands on the hardback edition of the latest one because my bookshelves are stuffed with the paperback editions and I can’t wait 6 months or more until the new paperback comes out.
No more funny looks on the train or in the bait room as I try (unsuccessfully) to avoid laughing out loud at a footnote.
No more new escapes into the wonderful snd off kilter imagination of Pterry but so many marvellous works to re-explore.
I am glad his passing was in the end peaceful and that his Alzheimers did not get so bad as to force him to self terminate. His end is tragic but in the end I think it was how he would have preferred it, rising from his sickbed without distrubing the cats to take the hand of Death.
RIP Pterry